personal blog from fALk v010

26.02.08

Nokias futuristic Morph Concept

its a nano phone of the future.. even though I think the "handheld" metapher will not hold by the time nanotech can do the cool things this device is suppose to make some of the concepts presented are quite novel - like the hand interface that molds it could actually work.

22.02.08

Digital Tattoo goes mainstream

Ah its just strange when you think of a sci-fi idea that you project about 15 years into the future and then all of the sudden researches take on the idea (or comes up with it themself) just 2 years later. So it happened to my Kalkin Revelation "tattoo interface". At least this can´t be patented in a general sense as I hold the prior art :)

Update: Oh the collective minds of the internet there is also a novel which employs the idea called the Commenwealth Saga by Peter F. Hamilton published around the same time as I had the idea first (about 3 years ago) - no I have not read this back then - maybe humanity has a collective mind after all ;)

16.02.08

Pseudo Neo Futuristic Steampunk Online Comic

If you like modern comics and you like a bit of water steam in them and a fucked up futuristic world you might like this online comic which just has started with episode one - free for your consumption.

13.02.08

What if I no longer have the patience to read a book because it’s too…. linear.

Is a question asked by Scott Karp from the Publishing 2.0 blog. The question is asked in the context of why one does read so much less books these days - even people who used to read a lot. And quite frankly he has the right answer -> they are too linear and linear is about as 20th century as it gets. The deep lying issue is that people are getting more and more used to nonlinear in any kind of media and nonlinear is better because it leaves you with choices and branching gives you pathes to futures you did not anticipate. On top of it you can shortcut to the important bits and save time. Surely there is detail missing here and there but there is always a side path to get to that detail if you really really keen for it and crave so badly. The article hits the nail right on top and it applies not only to books it applies to film and any kind of linear media we know - even music, rhythm and general life (who is under 30 and wants to stay in one and the same job for the rest of its life ?)
So its not only a move from an industrial century to information century its also a move from a linear century where paths have been laid out for us and futures have been drawn to a nonlinear century where the paths you walk on have a multitude of branches and options and winds and side paths and only you are in power to choose the ones that make you most happy. Now if that isn´t an uplifting prospect I don´t know what is....

Net advertisement is ineffective across the board - who would have thought

I never understood how google is making these shitloads of money because I can not believe that "click throughs" most of them accidental give advertisers any kind of leg up in the market. It seems my suspicion is right as a recent article on slashdot notes:

"A recent study finds that 6% of Web users generate 50% of the click-throughs. Worse news for advertisers: these clickers are not representative of the population as a whole, most have incomes under $40K, and their clicks are not related to any offline buying. (They are mostly males between 25 and 44 years of age.) The number of clicks on an ad campaign is also not strongly correlated with brand awareness for the ads' subject, according to the study. This is bad news for ad-supported Web sites and businesses, as rates should drop if the Net economy begins to take these findings seriously."

JNo brand awareness - no translation to actually go out and by a thing neither online nor offline - so what the heck is the use of online ads - especially unbranded adwords in general? But my suspicion goes even further - advertising as a whole in its current form of super branding and subtle force buying has seen the end of life on any media. People are over saturated by XX thousand brands competing for their brain cells and actually people find they might wanna use their braincells for something else. I would say as with the decline of TV we will also see a decline of advertisements in the coming years - now the question begs -> no brands -> no advertisements -> no free money -> no free culture? or is it free culture -> no brands -> no money -> no advertisement?

12.02.08

Benchmark One

11.02.08

Th ChallengeOfTheSuperDuperFriends

Even so I am not blogging about it I am highly interested in the current american primaries, because in the end the results don´t matter but its still fun to see human kind destroy its own dignity and call it sophisticated politics. Bush has done enough damage that any president left or right won´t change the countries direction for the next 100 years to come. Of course it can either get really ugly (repugs with highly christian "We have been put on earth 6000 years ago by a godly hand" - Hug-a-Bee or maverick McIhaveNoBrainLeftAndWeStayInIraqTheNext100Years) or less ugly but unable to move (with the dems and Mrs HilariousIneedToCryToGetPeopleToVoteForMe or the empty messaged Obamorama) but generally it won´t get much better as long as they think they are Gods own nation that is above all others (and no single candidate will ever change that). But the blogosphere reporting about the pimaries and caucuses and the general election are full of hilarious funny stuff I especially liked the following comic strip...

found originally in a comment thread on DailyKos with the original website for it here.

You know TV is dead …

… when the American population is not being influenced to vote for a certain person from a TV ad but instead from blogs and mouth to mouth propaganda. Kos from Dailykos makes the case that TV spending is way down for the pre-election in America - in his opinion just a matter of different circumstances compared to last year - yet if you read the comments you might come to the conclusion that this might not be the case and perhaps - yes TV is not as influential and important as it used to be and that the money - which is much more then in the three previous primary election combined - is spend elsewhere.

7.02.08

Apple Quicktime: documentation for DOM events

Well I have been eying the use of Quicktime together with javascript for quite some time now but was very afraid to actually shun the build in controller in favor of a custom designed controller. This is not a problem anymore. Apple as of today (coincidence that I went over there) has published the DOM events to attach event listeners to the quicktime plugin and therefore make it possible without too much hackery to take over control of the movie. It seems Apple fears the flash competition more then ever when it comes to online video distribution and this step - adding eventListeners (and documenting them) - will get them a bit of webcredibility again - especially since now you can control you embedded quicktime object better then a flash movie through javascript (standards nonproprietary scripting language etc etc). Together with the CCS3 animation properties (soon to be standards, nonproprietary) introduced in the latest build of safari and the only superb SVG (standard, nonproprietary ) support in Safari Apple is posed to be a real threat to Flash again (and by now it must be clear that I do not like Flash in any flavor).

The iCableCutters - its up to eight undersea cable cuts now

If you are to believe in a well researched and referenced article called Connecting the Dots there are a total of EIGHT undersea cables cut - all around the middle east. Save for an old rusty anchor in one of the cable instances near Quatar all the other cuts have occured to unknown circumstances. The whole last year had ONE cable cut now in less then four weeks we are at eight. Strategically they harm Egypt and Iran and the general middle east as well as India and Pakistan. The article goes on with speculation some quite sound. Iran is opening its Oil Bourse very soon, Egypt has upset Israel by not doing anything about the Palestinian tearing down the wall, Quatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, UAE and Saudi Arabia want to introduce their own Middle East Currency akin to the Euro - and likely want to trade Oil with it rather then with the dollar. And generally a cut fibre optics cable allows you to install an interceptor (so that is harder then it sounds because of the masses of traffic that would need to be intercepted and rerouted). All these are of course conspiracy theories and can´t be true. Its a total coincident that 8 cables in the same region are cut - not one cut has been identified why it happens and the world is flat.

Angelique Houtkamp - Betty Boo meets a Tattoo artist

Angelique Houtkamp is the inspirational Dutch tattoo mademoiselle of the contemporary art world

I would say she has a twisted whicked sense of style and borrows from betty boo in her main character. Very haunting stuff. A side project of hers are the painted children skulls (the mexican boy is pictured here).

Cultural Revolution Clipart

The Cutlural Revolution Clip Photoset on Flickr is for the time you are in the need of that special something for a next left-wing conspiracy party or when you want half a billion people almost starving or kill about 2 million indigenous people. Looking at communist propaganda vs. western propaganda (not only vintage) makes me think that the communists seem to be much more positive in their message over all then the fear mongering kapitalists.

Edward Tufte on the iPhone interface

Edward Tufte is some kind of interface/information ordering hero. His books on Information Design are simply stunning. He has a commentated interface walkthrough of the iPhone on his site. It fairly balanced but you do sense a kind of excitement - even so he compares some of the apps with bad powerpoint slides.
His most important quote of the video:

To clarify add detail

So I am not so sure if his alternative weather widget is really that much better in day to day use (he makes a point that adding information is a design challange but the weather widget in my eyes fails that challange)

6.02.08

Posterwhore - a blog with only posters

If you like posters this is the blog for you. The guy running the blog posts posters that he found on the net and elsewhere but also lets ANYONE post posters to the site - also for selfpromotion. Have a poster? Load it up there...

Prostetic arms shape up

The Iraq war with its tens of thousand of lost limbs is creating a huge demand for prosthetics and it seems with lots of money to be made the artificial limb industry is working hard to get this bionic arm thing working. The inventor of the failed Segway two wheeled nobody needs it personal transportation device tries his genius anew and creates the first robotic arm that can pick up grapes and bricks without destroying either. It gives sensory feedback (although crude) and has a plethora of control mechanism (foot taps, nerve endings and muscle). Don´t let the prosthetic overlords take over out earth!

HoloDeckCube coming near you

A Dutch comany called HoloCube starts marketing a similar called Device that lets you project movies in thin air. Its about 20 inch and geared towards the 3d advertising market (why? because it probably costs lots of mo and therefore the advertising market is the only market it could survive on). Expect StarWars HD quality holograms at your next fair visit. But don´t put you hand in one of these or they might get beamed to a 3rd dimension. (oh and of course in the video below you can NOT see the 3d effect as the video itself is only 2d! so just imagine the videos floating in air - if you believe the company. It must be the hardest thing to market anything "3d" with 2d mediums.)

5.02.08

Session Variables without cookies

I do not like code from untrusted sources reside on my harddrive so I dislike cookies in all its forms and flavors, yet if you want to do clever javascripting for your website you need to hold data in memory that transports across pages and does not necessarily needs to get stored on the server. A clever hack uses the window.name to store up to 2 MB of data - heck safari and firefox can even hold up to 64MB of data in that field (after which they crash - security problem? Opera has a 2MB limit set). The window.name is kept as long as you have the same window open so across page loads - just what you want if you need transistions of colors from one page to another for example. No word if Internet Exploder 6 is supporting it (I guess yes it should, but probably crashes after 100kb and you can only save M$ approving data ;)

NVidea&CG Society Art Challenge - Amazing Creations

3d is slowly transforming from an "elite only the big wealthy hollystudios can do it" art to a "everyone can do it" art and it shows from recent pictures you see from this field. NVidea and CG Society have seen this trend and called out for competition on "Amazing Creations" depicting non-representative 3d art. Some of the outcome is outright stunning - I liked some of the honorable mentioning best.

The FontExplanationSheet

3rd Party WiiMote with location capable gyroscopes

My love for the WiiMote goes way beyond Raymans Raving Rabbits and other fun games as I embrace the gyroscope filled controller for next generation interfaces and 3d tracking in various forms. 3d tracking with the WiiMote has but one big problem. While it is quite great to get the bank and roll data out of the white brick it is only possible to know where it is using infrared lights. Infrared lights tend to behave like real lights as they can get obscured or not in the right place when you need them. Sure you can try to get the location of the WiiMote by using the accelerometers and gyroscopes but the result - and I have tried that - is quite bad. You get what people call a drift very very badly especially when you move around the room with the thing and attach a camera to it.
Now the Boston USA based company Motus Corporation claim to have developed a WiiMote of their own that can be used without the infrared sensor bar and still get the location right. They developed it in the form of a Samurai sword handle and made it primary for the target group of golfers (their are known for golf training gear) but if any of their claims hold true this is the revolution of the sensor revolution. The gyro package send new data every 30 Milliseconds is called Darwin (probably because the software to read out WiiMote data on the computer is Darwin Remote?) seems semi compatible with the WiiMote (the protocol is the same but there is different data available). The firmware has error correction build in and my uneducated guess is that they slapped another 5 or so accelerometers in there to get a more accurate average reading. Surprisingly the price is "in the range" of not beeing overly gold encrusted (its going to be somewhere between $79 and $99) and if the claims hold up its a bargain because then you can build a real realtime camera tracking solution and with a couple of these also a motion capturing solution that rivals about everything out there in the price range 10k+. Lets hope they find a distributor soon (or figure out that in these days you can self distribute this and still be successful)

4.02.08

Microsofts Yahoo takeover bid - Flickr Users are revolting

As predicted on my first article on the subject, Flickr users are less then happy about a Microsoft takeover and have started the microsoft-keep-your-evil-grubby-hands-off-our-flickr pool.
But the more I think about it the more I see that this takeover is extremely vital to Microsoft and that it will go through no matter what because the offered money is to much to reject it with good faith on Yahoos part. Its not only about the advertising money coming from search engines, not only the very vocal on the frontline user groups of Flicker, delicious and Yahoo Groups it also the access to dynamic web services behind those groups and a way to push nonstandard microsoft standards down the internet users throat and - and I think this is much more a major deal then anything else - push Silverlight into the internet limelight and take on Adobe and Google at the same go - thats something Microsoft would be just too happy to accomplish.
Why? Because Flickr was the defining moment in internet history that got Flash out of the "don´t make any more stupid moving interfaces that take up the users time" into the "Flash is probably the only viable means to make interactive Webapplications with multimedia content". Its why Macromedia just a year later got bought by Adobe and its why YouTube came into existence in the first place. Now microsoft has been developing this "flash killer" that nobody has used anywhere on the web - if Flickr was to use Silverlight that would give Silverlight a proper boost and put it on the agenda of webdevelopers and Microsoft would not have sunk another project that was geared toward the web - or so is the management thinking probably. That this is all faulty thinking and that the only thing that would happen if Microsoft started pushing Silverlight onto Flickr is that Flickr would soon die - but thats not stopping Microsoft from trying - watch it.
I actually HOPE this is happening as this would definately make the animated vector graphics on the web race open again and put in SVG as a viable nonproprietary option much sooner then when it would need to just compete with flash on its own (no media attention no adoption). As said this is gonna be the grant internet soap opera for the weeks, month years to come - get a tea sit back relax. Its putting fire under google, its putting fire under adobe its putting fire under microsoft (trying to make something out of it) and the web has a chance to overcome old things (like Flickr itself) and create something new and hopefully more open more nonproprietary and better leaner meaner in the meantime.

How to build a Mac for $350 - if you like an unstable fiddly system

I am not the fiddler when it comes to computers as I am already pissed off to no end with crappy buggy software all day - so I like it clean and as stable as possible. Every time I put in stuff in my mac that was not 100% spec approved it made the machine more crashy in the years to come (and I have tried to mod my macs as much as possible in the past).
But for those who just want a computer to play around with and want to try out MacOS X or those who just don´t want to fork out the Apple premium to get OSX and have no problem with some weekly kernel panics and general hacklery along the line (especially if they want to stay up to date on their OS) there is an article on wildwobby with a detailed description and not so legal links to all parts you need to build a beigebox mac for ultra cheap. Also the article points to a forum thread for more help if you get stuck building your ultra cheap mac over at the InsanelyMac Forum.

The four cable internet outage and Iran

When I heard about the two major internet backbone carrying cables cut on the coast of Egypt I was already a bit on alert. It has not happened before that two cables were severed in one accident ever before. Since I have no clue how close the cables are layed together on the ocean ground I thought it could have been an accident. When there was reporting on a 3rd cable cut on the coast of France I believed nothing anymore. It has never happened before that three major internet backbone cables have been cut at the same time by an accident - nonetheless by the same type of accident (an anchor of a boat drags through the cables and cuts them in half). When there was report that a fourth backbone had been taken off the grid and the affected region was again similar (middle east) I thought to myself that there is something more at play here. First reports had the fourth cable also cut by an anchor - in the Persian Gulf on the coast of Quatar.
Then yesterday there came in reports of internet outages numbers. And while all the mainstream media reported that India had a 40% network loss, Egypt a 50% not a single news organisation actually reported that the only country with a 100% network loss is Iran. Thats right after the fourth cut cable Iran is now an internet island with not outside connection to the world until the cables are fixed.
Now today come i n reports that the Quatar cable is actually intact but that a power outage caused the trouble there - now isn´t Quatar the command center for the US of As army operation in the middle east?
What about the cables in Egypt? Well the radar records of the region at the time of the cutting show not a single ship in the area and the Egypt authorities say that the area is a nautical no go area - mainly because of its important infrastructure. So no ship equals no anchors equals something has cut them that was undersea not visible to radar.

This all comes at the same time the US of A is conducting an Cyber Attack exercise that is also geared against all evil bloggers trying to tell the truth.
So now I find it strange that exactly the four cables had accidents that connected Iran with the rest of the world. Don´t you?

1.02.08

Microsoft wants Yahoo - what you should know

Its official - after about 3 years in the rumor mill Microsoft made public today that they wanna swallow yahoo for some whopping 44.6 billion USD - Yahoo will probably go along as it looks like as of today. That a lot of cash but what Macrosoft does not see yet is the user exodus this will likely cause. For me the rumor has come 3 years ago almost exactly on the day I wanted to start using Flickr. This rumor back then was enough to reconsider putting my time and energy into that service - and my intellectual property because I read the fine print for Flickr and I did not like it (using all pictures for their own purpose whenever they want wherever they want - don´t know if that changed over the years). Now Macrosoft will have the rights that Yahoo had and therefore the rights to Flickr. I don´t know if there are any similar services out there but I am sure if there is even one that offers similar functionality as Flick user will start swarming away.

But the bug ain´t stopping there. del.icio.us is also part of Yahoo. Now I have extensive amounts of links on del.icio.us. but during my research for the podcast I stumbled across Ma.gnolia.com and guess what? It imports your del.icio.us links fully intact looks more pretty has more functions is easier to use has more possiblities to sort - its just A LOT better then del.ico.us - I switched in a heartbeat and it was perfect timing as it seems - no one knows how long you are allowed to export your del.icio.us bookmarks ones M$ ownz it all - and mostly reads it all as well and stores it and judges them - any pornlinks, warezlinks and similar darknet links to be removed very soon so they are clean MSN search compliant.

Then there is Yahoo Groups - one of the biggest mailinglist services out there. Again its one of the bussinesses Yahoo bought in over the years (and merged it with their own unsuccessful version). My old University runs their official mailinglist on there (something I initiated way way way back when nobody even knew what a mailing was) - well since mailinglists are not used that much anymore this is not a big loss, but a lot of communities might still want to reconsider if they want to open up their communication to microsoft who likes to work with governments.

Oh and then there is yahoo mail - expect your email address if you have on there to end as "msn.com" soon - no its not gonna happen but then again how would you feel if Microsoft has direct access to all your mail? Googlemail just looks sooo much more attractive.

I think M$ partially wants the groups that yahoo has created - lots of groups with diverse interests, groups that make art, collect links and just talk about diverse things. They also want the 10% search market share that yahoo has left (has anyone really ever used Yahoo search? I have and it sucked) in general I think Microsoft does not do itself nor Yahoo nor the internet a favor if it goes ahead (that still an incredible amount of money even for Microsoft) but since when does M$ think ahead? Generally its a grand Soap Opera unfolding in front of the internet users eyes and I am pretty sure like 10 years down the road it might end in big crocodile tears for Microsoft....

A bit more on the topic on Saturday in the radioPrototypen podcast (will be in german so)...

stat pr0n: Apple's Awesome Market Share Gains

Only believe statistics that you skewed yourself but.... you know I love statistics somehow... and while I was looking around what the current market share of browser are (just to see a trend when it comes to javascript) I stumbled across a little tidebit on the "market share by netapplications" (the article can not be linked - stupid them so they don´t get any traffic from here directly - you can google them and find the article easily).

not bad (when you think they have been down to less then 3% just 6 years ago) but the astonishing thing comes next:

December 30-31: 8.01%

thats a market share rise of 0.7% after holiday season. It also means Apple is closing in on the big 10% very soon - I thought I would never see that day (hey I was Apple user when there was no hope left so please bear with me and my over-enjoyment to see the better platform get its big bite out of the computer industry fruit)

Record high quality MP4 without a Computer for cheap

I normally don´t like to comment on products in general but I know that some fellow VJs have this big problem and this is just the perfect solution. The problem? Recording a 1+ hour set.

There are some solution already available but they are all bad, but lets recap them

1. Recording to a DV Camera
----------------------
The Good:
• Good quality
• small formfactor

The Bad:
• Expensive equipment
• Camera record head has limited live span and if you record a two hour set every week the camera will last about 4 month
• maximum record time per tape 120 min with reduced quality 90 minutes full dv quality
• for further distribution you have to digitize the stuff back in (loosing 90 minutes in the meantime)

2. Recording with a DVD Recorder
--------------------------
The Good:
• dvd recorder are quite cheap
• you have a dvd in your hand in the of it

The Bad:
• I have to see one DVD recorder that just works
• heavy basstly music will make the lens jump and leaves you with a broken DVD and mostly no way of recovering you footage - this happens VERY frequently
• putting it on the web (gooTube) requires you to rip the dvd - a long process.

3. Recording to a spare Laptop
------------------------
The Good:
• Full Quality/Codec/Format Control
• you have it on a harddrive and can just copy move it around recode it whatever

The Bad:
• EXPENSIVE who has earned the money to get a spare laptop to do just video recording - a raise of hands please
• Takes up lots of space
• cable mess
• spilled drinks

As we can see all these solutions are far from perfect and mostly stop gap measures to find a truly portable, cheap recording medium. Well a company that I once had a lot of love for but then got bought up by AVID and since then has not putting out much of interest has the perfect device. The company I am talking about is Pinnacle - people who have done video editing in the late 90s probably know it. They used to produce professional capture cards and computer/video stuff of high quality. Their new product is called - rather unispiring - the PINNACLE VIDEO TRANSFER. Its geared towards consumers but is just the perfect thing for the VJ warrior. It has video/audio inputs (S-Video, Composite-Video und Stereo-Audio) and a USB port. You feed it the video and connect a Harddrive of USB2 flavor or a PSP or an iPod or an Memory Stick on the USB port and it record you video to this massstorage of your choice as an MPG4 in a user customizable quality up to 720x576 25fps (full pal video (or NTSC if that is what you need). The thing without a drive costs kidney saving 129,00 Euro or as a bundle with a western digital USB2 harddrive you get it for 199,00 Euro.

• Storage only limited by the Connected Harddrive (1TB of MPG4 should get you about a week of footage)
• Small formfactor
• relatively cheap
• portable
• relatively high Quality (better then MPG2 DVD for sure! Not quite DV but close)
• little failure rate (especially when used with an SSD Drive or Memory stick -> no bass-moved heads jumping around)

The Bad (oh there always has to be one):
• Converting it to something else is about as painful as converting a DVD
• Converting it to something else is bringing you some bad quality loss

But since no one does DVDs anymore anyway you just set to the quality you need for your website and there you go no need for conversion ;)

This is what a VJ should have in its bag if she wants to record their sets - the ultimate solution for now.

Step Across The Border - very interesting title anim

Step Across The Border is a documentary about the rock guitar improvisor Fred Frith. I have not watched the whole documentary(full movie in the link) yet but the open sequence seen below on the YouTube snippet of the film rocked me deeply. Brilliant typographic play in a very vj like manner.